Staying Current In a Small Office Environment?

MyLongNickName writes "Less than a month ago I took a position at a smaller firm (around 50 employees) as an IT Manager. As you might expect from the size of the company, I oversee quite a variety of tasks. I come from a background of computer programming, and am definitely not a master of every function. We rely on third-party solutions providers for areas like our networking, web hosting, phone systems, etc. I am used to working in a larger environment with a large IT staff (and not just because of super sizing at McDonald's). Just the daily rubbing elbows allowed me to stay current in areas that I did not directly touch. And when I had a question, I personally knew someone who could answer my question. I am not in that environment now. How do I stay current? I don't want to be a master of every technology, but I want to be aware of trends in the industry. I want to not depend on one contractor advising me."

Comments

Amen, brother...

[Saint Aardvark]

Here are a few things that have helped me out:

• The big one: go to LISA. It can be tough convincing the boss to send their one-and-only IT guy, but it's an incredibly exciting environment. You'll learn lots, you'll meet lots, and you'll get to rub shoulders with people doing incredible things -- and people in the same boat you are.
• If you can't go to LISA, start reading their proceedings. They've just opened up everything to the public (previously you had to wait a year if you weren't a member), and there are some incredible gems to be found. The MP3s from LISA '07 weren't as good as being there would have been (sob), but they're still damned good.
• You should still get a membership in SAGE. Subscribe to the mailing lists, get a subscription to ;login:, and inhale deeply.
• Look around for professional organizations to join, or other opportunities. There's a sysadmin group at the university where I work; there's also a committee trying to figure out what the university's IT strategy should be for the next 5-10 years. I've been lucky enough to be involved with both, and they're interesting. Sure, I run a small shop, but I've rubbed shoulders with (well, envied from across the room :-) the guy in charge of a cluster of computers that'll be processing data for the ATLAS experiment.
• Start your own techy/sysadmin conference, a la LUGRadio Live. No, LUGRadio Live isn't particularly sysadmin-oriented, but I have the strong impression that the organizers just decided they wanted to hold their own conference, and they did. And if you look at the schedule for their US conference, it's got a damned impressive list of presenters. (I'm considering starting a sysadmin conference next summer in Vancouver, BC...anyone interested?)
• Other sources of info: Planet Sysadmin (disclaimer: they've got my blog in there), ONLamp, and your local LUG.

Hope this helps!

Join a Networking Group

[moore.dustin]

and keep reading/commenting on tech related sites like this. The networking group is easy to find in any metro area with some Googling. Another oft overlooked method in this day and age is the good ol' subscription to a magazine. (eWeek and NetworkWorld are free and tend to follow the new buzzwords well enough. Currently you can read about cloud computing and speculation on Semantic web stuff)

In all honesty, you simply wanting to keep up-to-date is going to be enough. If you are interested in the subject matter to begin with, then you often find you keep up to speed with out making the _specific_ effort.

Re:M$ IS TEH CANCER

[Anonymous Coward]

You want lots of wow?
https://slashdot.org/~willyhill/journal/204399

Re:read slashdot

[TibbonZero]

There's always the archives! Nothing is lost. Of course they aren't "current" anymore. Still, the comments at +5 are often gold.

RTFM

[vawarayer]

My current work environment seems to be quite similar to yours. Although I do not consider myself a master, I'm definitely a jack of all trades. Fax machines, copiers, computer networks (Linux, Windows), Intranet sites design, etc.

How do I keep current? Just reading the manuals.

• Web design? w3.org / www.php.net
• Networks? Microsoft Support
• Copiers, faxes and other hardware? manufacturers' sites

This is honestly where i've learned all what i know now.

Focus on what's in your setup

[atraintocry]

I'm in much the same position, but I don't see my goal so much as keeping current, as becoming as knowledgeable as possible about the software and hardware that I have to oversee. I could care less what Yahoo! is trading at. There's security news to keep up on but we don't run any outside services, so I find that my time is better spent digging deeper into GPOs, deploying software and whatnot.

Learn as much as you can stomach about networks. Just grab one of the certification course books, like for the CCNA. You have to keep up-to-date with hardware and OS because things will change, but hopefully not too quickly, and the nice thing about being in charge of IT, is those changes happen through you.

Political though it may be, Thurrott's supersite has good info a lot of the time.

Join

[mattboston]

a local user group or two. I know where I live there is one for practically everything from Windows and Linux to PHP and Drupal.

are you kidding?

[CAIMLAS]

You are living in an age of free, universally available information. There is almost literally no limit to how much useful, free information is out there, and the most prevalent type of information is typically on computing - software and hardware.

If you've gotten this far in your career without realizing this little fact, I'd be a bit concerned about your intellectual vitality if I were your employer. Being able to shoot ideas off fellow employees is one thing; having to rely on them to keep your knowledge up-to-par is another.

Granted, it depends on the type of information you're after, and to what depth you want, but there is not going to be a golden spoon for getting Manager-approved sound bite knowledge - and that appears to be what you're after.

Just as programmers will have to spend hours of their day pouring over interface documentation, so will you have to do as an IT administrator. You will have to demonstrate a curiosity in how things work, and when you come upon something which is foreign, look it up. There are dozens of Internet-published tech rags with information, if you're looking for something only roughly instructive, and Wikipedia is an awesome resource if you're trying to get a high-level understanding of what something is and how it works. Then, you'll have enough information to dig deeper.

You'd be surprised how many hours you'll save simply by googling something relatively simple - like installing Windows 2003 on an HP low-end Opteron server. It'll point out shortcomings and problems which would take you, the tech guy, hours to figure out on your own on aggregate. Time spent reading documentation more than makes up for time lost trying to figure out esoteric problems.

Hell, then there's just the simple google search. No, they won't all yield results you'll want to use; you might spend an hour or two just digging for a snippet of information, but you'll learn a lot about the extenuating circumstances in the process. A quick google search is often one of the best ways to quickly determine whether a certain course of action is a bad idea - not a good idea, but a bad idea, as people are likely to bitch if something doesn't work properly or if something is inherently shitty. Though, sometimes, something is so bad that nobody uses it.

And, of course, this is Slashdot... spend an hour or so on here every week reading comments on pertinent threads, and you'll pick up on a lot of "peer knowledge". Of course, it won't all be correct - but then, you'll run into that with coworkers, too.

I'd have thought anyone in IT would've figured this shit out by their freshman year of high school, or at least, by the end of the freshman university year.

Maybe sysadmin duties are a lot more divergent than programming duties and knowledge than I'd thought, but either way, you've got quite a bit of reading ahead of you!